Pageantry and primitivism: Dorothea Fairbridge and the ‘aesthetics of union‘

Abstract

This article seeks to introduce the life and work of Dorothea Fairbridge, a long‐forgotten yet prolific Cape colonial author, as a worthwhile subject in South African literary history; it also seeks (while describing the activities of Fairbridge's cultural coterie) to sketch the field for further work in what is termed the ‘aesthetics of Union’ or Cape imperial aesthetics and iconography.¹ For the sake of economy, several specific topics will be emphasised within a broader discussion of aesthetics and iconography: aspects of the patriarchal construction of Victorian Cape Town; some details concerning the Cape's ‘Mediterranean’ and ‘Egyptian’ connections; a description of the pro‐Union magazine, The State, run by members of Milner's ‘kindergarten'; and, finally, the events of the 1910 Union Pageant. Regarding the impact of modernism in Edwardian Cape Town, the paper focuses on two aspects of this movement, namely ‘pageantry’ and ‘primitivism’. A contrast is made between taxonomical and iconographic cultural activity; and, in particular, iconography and pageantry are shown to have been constitutive to national and imperial identity.